Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is dropping a series of property lawsuits over his ownership of a sizeable piece of beachfront land in Hawaii. The decision follows public outcry on the island of Kauai, where Zuckerberg sought to buy out locals who may have ownership stakes in some of the land he purchased there in 2014 for more than $100 million.

"To find a better path forward, we are dropping," the lawsuits, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, wrote in an op-ed published Friday by a local Hawaiian newspaper. "We want to make this right, talk with the community, and find a better approach."

In December, Zuckerberg, through a series of LLC's he controls, filed eight separate lawsuits in state court, known as "quiet title and partition" actions, seeking to buy out locals who may have partial ownership stake in the property under an obscure Hawaiian law. Chain of title property records in Hawaii are often spotty, legal experts said, making it difficult to determine the boundaries of privately held property and who owns what. The legal actions, first reported by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, sought to both identify potential property owners and force the sale of any outstanding ownership stakes to the highest bidder.

It's difficult to imagine that anyone could outbid Zuckerberg, who as of today is worth $55.4 billion, according to Forbes' estimates. At the center of the lawsuits is a roughly 700-acre piece of land on Kauai's north shore, which is broken up into more than a dozen separate parcels.

Initially, Zuckerberg defended his decision to file the legal action, arguing that it was common practice in Hawaii and that some locals with ownership stakes didn't realize they had them, and would benefit from being paid for land they were not actively using. “It is common in Hawaii to have small parcels of land within the boundaries of a larger tract, and for the title to these smaller parcels to have become broken or clouded over time. In some cases, co-owners may not even be aware of their interests," Zuckerberg's lawyer, Keoni Schultz, said in a written statement earlier this month. "Quiet title actions are the standard and prescribed process to identify all potential co-owners, determine ownership, and ensure that, if there are other co-owners, each receives appropriate value for their ownership share.”

But Zuckerberg reversed course on Friday, despite months of work by a team of lawyers and legal experts to piece together property records that, in some cases, were identified in court records as possibly belonging to unnamed individuals. One complaint listed "DOE DEFENDANTS 1-50; and ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN" as parties to the case.

While local property attorneys not involved with the case confirmed that the approach was standard practice, Zuckerberg dropped the matter, hinting Friday at a resolution outside of court that involved talking with stakeholders to "discuss how to best move forward." It's unclear what that will look like, or whether Zuckerberg understood the legal issues when he purchased property that, in some cases, had been passed down from previous generations without detailed documentation that's considered standard for property transfers in the rest of the country.

State representatives criticized the legal action in recent days, while neighbors of the property reportedly planned to march this weekend in protest. In a Facebook post on January 19, Zuckerberg dubbed media coverage of the lawsuits "misleading," arguing that his lawsuits would help clear up otherwise clouded property records and that no one would be "forced off" the land as a result.

"Upon reflection, I regret that I did not take the time to fully understand the quiet title process and its history before we moved ahead," Zuckerberg wrote Friday. "Now that I understand the issues better, it's clear we made a mistake."

A spokesman for Zuckerberg declined to comment on the decision. A representative for the Fifth Circuit court in Hawaii did not immediately confirm whether the lawsuits had been formally dismissed by the court.

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